Embodiments of the invention generally relate to a printing apparatus, and particularly to a heater chip of the printing apparatus.
Conventional ink jet printing apparatus typically include one or more printheads in which ink is stored. The printheads have one or more ink reservoirs in fluid communication with nozzles through which ink exits the printhead toward a print medium. In many cases, the nozzles are located in one or more nozzle plates coupled to a body of the printhead. Each nozzle plate can be or include a heater chip having heat transducers or heaters that heat and vaporize the ink, thereby ejecting the ink from the nozzles.
The heater chips typically include logic circuitry, a plurality of power transistors, and a set of heating elements, heaters, or resistors. A hardware or software printer driver will selectively address, power, or energize the logic circuitry via a network of power connections such that the appropriate heating elements, heaters, or resistors are powered, addressed, actuated, energized, or heated for printing. In some heater chip designs, memory is used to address or energize the heating elements, heaters, or resistors. The memory can also be used to determine if the printhead is a monochrome printhead, a color printhead or a photograph quality printer printhead. A thermal ink jet printhead generally includes a network of ejection devices that are generated by joining a heater chip and a nozzle member. When energized, the heater chip fires a droplet of ink. The nozzle member is typically configured to focus the energy and direction of the droplet such that the ink droplet can be precisely located.